I spent last week with my family in Mississippi. It was nice to be around the people that I love. My dad, sisters, and their families. But, Thanksgiving is over, and it’s time to get back to work. Or, if you were like me, you worked through Thanksgiving. I have a book to produce. Actually, a book and a novella. So, while I did take Thanksgiving Day off, I spent the rest of the weekend finishing up with minor edits and details for those books.

It’s down to the wire now.

I’ve ordered print proofs of the Biloxi Sunrise/Biloxi Christmas combo. I should have those on Tuesday. As soon as I receive them, I can do the final read through and release the book for print. I’m so excited, and honestly a little apprehensive, too. What if something goes wonky? I’ve reviewed the PDF proofs, but you never know what might happen once it’s printed.

Even if the print edition is perfect (and I’m sure it’s not), the work isn’t done. Once the final review is done, I have to do the Kindle formatting. I’ve heard that CreateSpace isn’t a great option for that. The last time I produced an e-book, I used Smashwords. I’ll probably go through them again. Even so, there’s a lot of work to do to get the final manuscript ready to go.

The marketing has also been on my mind a lot lately. Ideally, I should have started marketing both the novella and the print edition of Biloxi Sunrise a long time ago. At least back in October. Circumstances being what they are (and me being the bull in the china shop that I am), that wasn’t possible. So, now I’m down to the wire trying to figure out the marketing, too. I’ve resigned myself to this being a fairly quiet release; more a lessons-learned exercise that can serve as a launch pad for the release of Biloxi Blue.

That’s a lot of how I’ve managed my career as a writer. One learning experience after another. It works for me, but it might not work well for other people. I learn best when doing, though. Even when I’m working on a novel, it helps me to be able to go through the steps, sometimes diagram them out, so see where I’m going. It takes a little longer, it’s probably even a little harder, but in the end, I learn the best way for me.

Getting down to the wire isn’t a bad thing. For me, it means I’ve worked through a lot of major details. I’ve learned a lot of lessons, and I can finally see the end in sight. That’s the part that I like the best. I can see the finish line. And I might even already be working on the plan for the next book, with everything that I’ve learned in mind.